CHAPTER XXXVI
Olaf Haakonson the Young (1381-1387)
OLAF, the only son of King Haakon Magnusson and the Danish Margaret, was, at the death of his maternal grandfather, Valdemar Atterdag (1376), proclaimed king of Denmark under the guardianship of his parents, and at the death of his father four years later, when he was ten years old, he inherited the throne of Norway. His mother proceeded to Oslo, where a meeting of the Norwegian chiefs was held early in January, 1381. Here it was arranged that Queen Margaret was to be the guardian of her son and conduct the government in his name, when she was in the country, but in her absence the administration should be conducted by the chieftain Ogmund Finnson, as leader of the state council. Olaf was crowned in Nidaros on Saint Olaf’s Day, July 29, 1381. Thus commenced the union between Norway and Denmark, which lasted for over four hundred years and proved so unfortunate for Norway. To the great sorrow of the Norwegians, King Olaf, when scarcely seventeen years old, was taken suddenly sick at Falsterbro Castle, Scania, and died August 3, 1387.
Fifteen years after Olaf’s death an adventurer appeared who claimed to be King Olaf, and the rumor soon spread that Olaf had escaped from his mother shortly before the time of his alleged death. It was proven, however, that the pretender was a German, and that some merchants, who had noticed the great likeness he bore to Olaf, had induced him to make the claim. The impostor was condemned to death and burned.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Margaret (1387-1389)—Erik of Pomerania (1389-1442)—The Kalmar Union (1397)
AS young Olaf left no offspring, it was quite generally supposed in Norway that the kingdom would be given to his nearest relative, Haakon Jonson, a grandson of King Haakon V.’s illegitimate daughter Agneta; but the wily Queen Margaret (who had already been acknowledged as reigning queen of Denmark), induced Archbishop Vinald and the majority of the clergy to take her part, and, at the state council in Oslo, February 2, 1388, she was, as Haakon’s widow and Olaf’s mother, declared to be the rightful ruler of Norway and its dependencies. According to law, however, the Norwegians were to be ruled by a king, and could not long be satisfied with having the government conducted in the name of a woman. She therefore induced the council to choose her grandnephew, Erik of Pomerania, as king of Norway (1389), she to continue the regency during his minority.
King Albrecht of Mecklenburg, who was at this time reigning in Sweden, had caused a great deal of discontent among the Swedish nobility, because he had surrounded himself with Germans, whom he had given places of influence and honor. The ambitious Queen Margaret, who hated Albrecht deeply, because he had laid claim to the Danish throne, made overtures to the Swedish magnates, with the result that they chose her as “the mistress and rightful ruler of Sweden,” and transferred several fortified places to her, while she promised to reunite West Gautland and Vermeland with Sweden. Albrecht proceeded to Germany to collect an army, and swore that he would not put his hood on before he had conquered Norway and Denmark. He sent Margaret several insulting messages, called her “Queen Breechless,” and sent her a whetstone on which to sharpen her scissors and needles, saying that the good woman ought to remain quietly at her spinning wheel. The queen’s chiefs, Ivar Lykke and Henrik Parow, invaded Sweden with an army, and won a battle at Falköping in West Gautland. Albrecht was taken prisoner and was brought before the queen, who reminded him of his insults. She gave him a long fool’s-cap to wear instead of the crown of Denmark, and sent him to prison in the castle of Lindholm in Scania, where he remained six years.
Queen Margaret soon won the whole of Sweden except Stockholm, where the German merchants and the hood-brothers made a determined resistance. They received aid from the North German cities Rostock and Wismar, whose rulers proclaimed that any one who would harry the coasts of the Scandinavian countries could find refuge in their harbors; and the result was a number of pirates, the so-called Victualia-Brethren, made the northern waters unsafe for several years, and plundered many of the coast towns. Thus they twice attacked and plundered Bergen. In order to gain his liberty, Albrecht, in 1395, made an agreement that within three years he would either pay 60,000 marks silver or release Stockholm. He could not pay the money, and Stockholm’s gates were opened to Queen Margaret.
In 1397 Queen Margaret’s sixteen-year-old grandnephew, Erik of Pomerania, was crowned in Kalmar as king of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, in the presence of prominent men from the three countries. A document was drafted containing the provisions regarding the triple union, and it was signed on Margaret’s Day, July 20, 1397. It could scarcely be considered binding upon the three countries, as it was signed by only seventeen of the gentlemen present, and they had not been given power to act for their countrymen. The main stipulations of the agreement were the following: